The President’s Real ISIS Strategy

Below is a guest-essay by Dave Petteys about President Obama’s recent reluctant decision to take action against the Islamic State, and what it means in the larger picture.

The President’s Real ISIS Strategy

by Dave Petteys
ACT! for America 5280 Coalition

The President and his Muslim Brotherhood advisors[1] are apparently in sympathy with ISIS’ goals of imposing the Shari’a and building the Caliphate. Thus, their conundrum is how to make the President appear to be “doing something”, yet actually doing nothing to harm ISIS. Becoming bogged down in fruitless negotiations in “building a coalition” fits their purpose to a tee.

One by one our “allies” are declining to participate[2], especially the Islamic ones. It’s easy to understand: why would any Islamic country join the “kafir” United States and fight their co-religionists who are waging qur’anically sanctioned Jihad against the unbelievers? Oh, but our government doesn’t “do the God thing” and has to ignore the elephant in the room called Islam. Americans are completely locked in to the Kennedy School of Government nation-state paradigm. The notion of “religious war” is unacceptable! Religious wars went out of style 500 years ago — right?

Hopefully, once football season gets underway, the public eye will be avert from ISIS, and it can resume building the Caliphate unobstructed. (If only they’d refrain from these embarrassing beheadings!)

So what are we to do?

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 9/22/2014

Tonight’s news feed includes most of the tips that were sent in today, but I know I missed a few.

The biggest news concerns the aftermath (including anti-mosque protests) of the mass arrests of “Australian” supporters of the Islamic State — which still has nothing to do with Islam.

Meanwhile, the United States and its allies began air attacks against ISIS targets in Syria.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to Fjordman, Insubria, Jerry Gordon, JP, Phyllis Chesler, Takuan Seiyo, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

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The Heart of the Matter

Dymphna is in the midst of another exciting medical adventure.

Last night (which seems like earlier today, due to my almost complete lack of sleep) Dymphna’s respiratory symptoms became acute. They initially seemed to be those of regular asthma (which she has), but they were not alleviated by the usual palliative measures, such as using the nebulizer with albuterol. She simply could not get her breath, and could barely speak, even in a whisper. Her “air hunger” was insatiable.

So off we went to the emergency room in the wee hours of this morning. To make a long story short, it turned out that she had the peculiar kind of arrhythmia brought on by the failure of nerve signals between different chambers of the heart. The recommended treatment is the surgical implantation of a pacemaker, which was carried out later in the morning.

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 9/21/2014

Dymphna is in medical distress at the moment. We’re waiting on a call-back from the doctor, and then we’ll be heading for the emergency room.

If this site goes dormant for a while, and your comments don’t get approved in a timely fashion, you’ll know why.

In the meantime, keep checking in at Vlad Tepes. Anything important that you need to know will be posted there. Especially videos — many videos are up on Vlad before you see them anywhere else.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to Andy Bostom, C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, Jerry Gordon, JP, KGS, RL, The Observer, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

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Pure, Unadulterated Islam, Part Two: Mohammed the Model

Below is the second of two-part series about the Islamic State by Hartmut Krauss, as translated by JLH. Part One is here.

Pure, Unadulterated Islam

On the “Islamic State” — The Basis for its Impetus and Legitimization and for its Anti-Civilization Reign of Terror (Continued)

By Hartmut Krauss
August 29, 2014

Source: Hintergrund-Verlag

II. “Mohammed the Model” and Islamic Imperialistic Conquest as Historical Paragon

The life and works of the Prophet Mohammed as described in traditional tales and biographies are the sacred model for devout Muslims. Whoever doubts, criticizes, questions or actually mocks it is a blasphemer, to be punished with utmost severity.[12]

If we examine Mohammed’s vita more closely, we find a wealth of material for emulation on the violent practice of Islamic orthodoxy. Mohammed functions not only as the proclaimer, but as the enactor of Allah’s absolute laws. Ayatollah Khomeini expressed this clearly and succinctly in his “The Islamic State” (1983, p. 28). “At the time of the most noble Prophet…laws were not just announced and explained. They were carried out. God’s Messenger… carried out the laws. For instance, he carried out the directions of criminal law. He chopped off thieves’ hands, he stoned those convicted under Hadd.[13] The caliph, too has the responsibility of disposing of such matters.” The perpetrators of IS are acting in strict accordance with this principle.

The actions of the Prophet also included contract killing. This was directed at those who — after military confrontations — authored insulting verses about Mohammed’s tribe, the Quraysh. One of these persons was Ka’b b. al-Asraf, a leader of the Jewish Banu n-Nadir. After Mohammed’s death edict had been carried out, “The criminals carried Ka’b’s severed head to Mohammed. As they drew close to his home, they called out, ‘Allahu akbar!’ and the Prophet interrupted his ritual prayer with ‘Allahu akbar!’ ‘Blessed be your countenances!’ He greeted them. ‘And yours, Messenger of Allah!’ they replied, and threw the severed head at his feet. He praised Allah for the death of Ka’b. then he spat into the wound of the [one] murderer who had been injured, and the wound healed. This is what al-Waqidi reports about the ghastly crime.” (Nagel 2008, p. 38)

The IS practice of beheading defenseless male “infidels” as well as raping and enslaving women and girls is also a “Salafist” tradition, as is the early Muslim robbery-and-conquest economy, including the traditional extortion of ransom for captured hostages. The fate of the Jewish tribe, the Qurayzah, may serve as an example. During the “War of the Trench,” they were accused of covertly aiding the hostile besiegers and blockading their own residential quarter for 25 days. After their capitulation, the defeated Qurayzah were prepared, like the other Jewish tribes, to leave the city under the same stipulations. But Mohammed rejected this and made a perfidious arrangement with the arbiter, Sad ibn Moas, “who, he knew full well, did not have a good word to say about the Qurayzah. Sad did not disappoint him. His decision was that all (700, H.K.) men of the Banu Qurayzah should be beheaded, the women and children sold into slavery and their entire property distributed among the Muslims.” (Dashti 1997, p. 163) Rodinson (1975, p. 205) describes the carrying out of the gruesome deed: “The next day, he (Mohammed, H.K.) had great ditches dug in the market of Medina. The Jews were led there, bound and in groups, beheaded one-by-one and thrown in. Some say there were between 600 and 700, others between 800 and 900.”

In retrospect, Mohammed interprets the horrifying occurrence as “God’s judgment”[14] and adds that a Jewish woman was beheaded in contravention of Sad’s judgment, because she had thrown a stone during the blockade of her residential quarter. She had been a friend of his wife Aisha.

Tradition explicitly legitimizes the rape of women in conquered regions: “According to Abu Said — We were on a campaign with God’s Messenger in Mustaliq and took upper-class women from among the Arabs. We had had to practice abstinence for a long time, but we wanted ransom. And we wanted to pleasure ourselves and practice coitus interruptus.

We said: If we wish to do this while we are in company with God’s Messenger, should we not ask him about it.

So we asked him.

He said: You have no obligation not to do it. The creation of a human being, from now until the Day of Resurrection, does not happen, unless God decides it.” (Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawud, Tirmidhi, Nasai)[15]

Contrary to the myth of Islamic tolerance — which is just as persistent as it is false — it is legitimate, besides economic extortion and mass slavery, to confirm the following agenda, which serves today’s jihadist as an unadulterated model.

As is known from traditional chronicles, the early Muslim and later conquests were invariably connected with massacres, devastation and extirpation, In the subjection of Syria under the first caliph, Abu Bakr, for instance, 4,000 peasants (Christians, Jews and Samaritans) were murdered. It was the same in the conquest of Mesopotamia from 635 to 642 or the military acquisition of Egypt and Armenia. Sometimes the entire population was slaughtered and in many places women, children and old people were killed. That the expansion of the Islamic culture by the sword was an exception, as claimed by “Islamic leaders” in an open letter to Pope Benedict XVI, does not correspond with the truth. On the contrary, similar atrocities could be recorded in all areas of conquest.[16] On the Arabian peninsula, a policy of religious cleansing was pursued, and Arabia, with the exception of Yemen and Jordan, was made “Jew- and Christian-free” — a procedure that was employed later in Spain by the Almohads and Amoravids after the end of the caliphate in 1031. There were pogroms against Christians in 889 in Elvira and Seville; against Jews in Moroccan Fez in 1033 with over 6,000 dead, in 1066 in Granada with 1,500 families killed[17], in 1135 in Cordova and 1235 in Marrakesh.

“The (anti-Jewish, H.K.) pogroms in Christian-ruled areas,” according to Flaig (2006, p. 37) “are no badge of honor for European culture, but their magnitude was far less than those of the Islamic world. There is a pressing need for a comparative history of religious subjugation.”

The Islamization accomplished as a result of the conquest of numerous tribes also includes an inter-cultural synthesis with, in part, fatal consequences. An example is the combination of Mongolian cultural heritage with the Islamic hegemony culture, as represented by the infamous and blood-thirsty despot, Timur the Lame — also called Tamerlane. He killed thousands of Hindus and erected a triumphal column from their severed heads. He also carried out a systematic annihilation of Christians in Mesopotamia, to which tens of thousands fell victim. His ghastly methods of dominating “represent a historically unprecedented synthesis of Mongolian barbarism and Muslim fanaticism. He symbolizes that particular advanced type of primitive slaughter: Murder committed in service of an abstract ideology, as duty and sacred mission.” (Grousset, quoted in Warraq 2004, p.324)

III. Conclusions

The elemental nexus of the claim to religious superiority, the drive for universal-absolute sovereignty and the jihad principle has two serious consequences:

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“We Will Break Their Backs in Their Own Country”

Last week a Iranian-Canadian pleaded guilty to terrorism charges in Ottawa. He was sentenced to twenty-four years in prison, but will probably be paroled in nine years.

The defendant, Hiva Mohammed Alizadeh (Mohammed Coefficient: 100%), was overheard saying of his fellow Canadians, “If Allah wills… we will break their backs in their own country.”

Hmm… Sounds like “destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands”. Has this guy read the Explanatory Memorandum?

Nah. Couldn’t be. The Ikhwan is a Sunni organization, and Mr. Alizadeh is a Shiite. There must be some other explanation…

The following video contains a brief excerpt from Ezra Levant’s take on this culturally enriched “Canadian”. Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this clip:

Below are excerpts from the accompanying Sun News Network article on the case:

OTTAWA — The ringleader of an Ottawa terror cell pleaded guilty Wednesday to terrorism offences under a deal that will see him sentenced to 24 years in prison.

Hiva Alizadeh, 33, a jihadist who has undergone paramilitary training in terrorist training camps, will be spared a potential life sentence for recruiting sympathizers, funding overseas terror networks and plotting to attack targets in Canada.

“You have brought untold shame upon your family, your community and peace-loving Muslims throughout this country,” Judge Colin McKinnon said.

“You have effectively been convicted of treason, an act that invites universal condemnation among sovereign states throughout the world.

“Your actions were selfish in the extreme, deserving of the derision and contempt that you must endure, now and in the future.”

Alizadeh was one of four men arrested in August 2010 as part of Project Samossa (sic), though only three were charged with terrorism offences.

Police had him and his network under surveillance for months, including bugging his Ottawa flat and phones.

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A Traitor and a Quisling at Number 10

As reported on the LibertyGB website, Paul Weston gave a speech yesterday at Downing Street, at the invitation of the English Defence League.

WARNING: Mr. Weston’s speech was an impassioned one, so the video below includes some salty language:

For those who find the audio difficult to make out (as I did), a full transcript is below.

Transcript:

Well, first of all, it is an honour and a privilege to be asked by the EDL to come here and speak today. Thank you very much.

Secondly, I’m not going to talk about left wing and right wing here — I’m going to talk about good and evil, civilisation against barbarianism, right against wrong. And when I look at this sea of proud, British, brave patriots, and then I look across there and I see quislings, cowards and traitors … it’s just a shame we’re not a bit closer.

I [want to have a little chat] with David Cameron today, because David Cameron thinks that every single one of you here is ‘sick’, as he calls it. The Left is sick, Islam is sick, but most importantly David Cameron is not just a coward, he is sick and he is a traitor to this country.

David Cameron is on YouTube video saying there are too many Christian faces in the British government. David Cameron is on YouTube video saying he looks forward to the day there are more Muslims in our army, in our police force and in our government. Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat MP, looks forward to the day that there’s a Muslim Prime Minister in this country. Well, we don’t and I don’t!

David Cameron is essentially a fully-fledged traitor to his country. He needs to be told this. And David Cameron — when Fusilier Lee Rigby was beheaded — Cameron said, this has nothing to do with Islam — as a Muslim stood over him with a bloody knife quoting the f****** Koran.

When David Haines was beheaded by a British Muslim in Syria, David Cameron said, this has nothing to do with the religion of peace called Islam. Cameron, you’re a liar and you’re a traitor!

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 9/20/2014

The Islamic State is recruiting young Turkish men in the suburbs of Istanbul, and having some success. The new recruits come mainly from poverty-stricken neighborhoods where drug addiction and alienation are rife.

In other news, French police arrested six people on terror-related offenses in the Lyon area. Those arrested are suspected of recruiting young women for ISIS in Syria.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JP, RR, Srdja Trifkovic, Steen, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

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Id, Ego and the Bible

Our Israeli correspondent MC sends this meditation about the deracination of the West, and the consequent empowerment of destructive evil, such as that manifested by the Islamic State.

Id, Ego and the Bible
by MC

Many people purport to love God, but we must ask ourselves: Do I love God with all my ego? Do I love God with all my id? Or do I love Yahovah with all my heart?

Let us delve into this, because it is quite vital. The Bible asserts that man was cut off from Yahovah in the Garden of Eden because, by eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, he too became a God in his own right and independent of Yahovah.

Man’s godship can thus be a godship of the ego (self), a godship of the id (intellect), or a godship of Yahovah where one seeks to restore the perfection of the pre-fall Adam.

Most people are worshipers of their own ego and build ‘God’ in their own image and likeness, others build intellectual ‘gods’, usually from a model ‘God’ defined by a ‘prophet’(who may be an ego-worshipper). One can also be inclined to both, in a grey area of constant see-sawing between me and my God as opposed to my God and me.

We must consider the question: Who or what created all things? We do not have a rational answer to this, and many people just don’t care one way or the other. These are people who have built their God around their own essence; their God is themselves and the world exists to serve that God.

Others look around for a more logical explanation, seeking for the wisdom of other men to absorb into their lives. This is an id level of godship where a human or group of humans have defined a discipline with which a searching intellect can identify comfortably.

Of the two, the former is mostly harmless to everyone but the egotist himself. But the latter can be malignant and evangelical at the same time. Over time this latter group has caused death and destruction on a grand scale, and as weaponry becomes more effective, so they become even more dangerous.

The ego-driven person exists in his own bubble of awareness, not at all independent of the other bubbles around him, but in a symbiosis with them as is required for survival and comfort. On the other hand, the id-driven person lives in a group bubble, having to share and to conform to the ethos of that bubble or be cast out, dead or alive.

Judeo-Christianity is based upon an old book, written a long, long time ago and which purveys a claim to be a text of a Creator God. Now it is not the purpose of this essay to argue the truth (or not) of the Bible, but what I will do is argue the effectiveness of the Bible. Bible-based societies prosper as no other societies do or have done. The Bible produces ‘civilization’.

At worst, Bible-based societies are just ‘id bubbles’ with a ‘good’ formula. At the other extreme, the Bible is the Creator’s ‘workshop’ manual and gives us the nuts and bolts of Creation and how to make it work for us.

In this world today, we can see these influences at work, but there is something else going on as well. There is a spiritual force which is seeking to tear down the Bible influences and reduce Judeo-Christianity to just another id-istic pile of rubble.

If I were to call this destructive spirit ‘Satan’ in line with Judeo-Christian tradition (it is not so much a Jewish tradition), many would throw up their hands in disgust, so let us call it ‘nihilism’ instead. Nihilism seeks to break down all man’s endeavours and return them to dust.

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Stand With the Nazarenes

Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy sent us the following email this morning:

I just left a meeting with a Senior Congressman on Capitol Hill.

The information I received from that meeting astounded me. The first thing I’ve done is sit down and write you this email … the information is that important.

The Congressman and I were speaking about matters of national security. The conversation naturally turned to the Islamic State (also referred to as ISIS or ISIL) and the threat it poses. As we were talking, I explained the tragic use of the Arabic “N” on Christian houses … and the Congressman had no idea what I was speaking about. Once I was done explaining this, he told me he was positive few Americans are aware of this as well.

Today alone, Islamic State jihadists will kill 100 or more Christians in Iraq and Syria. They are attempting to commit genocide against Christians. Now, you know me. I rarely discuss religion. But this isn’t about religion as you’ll soon read.

The Islamic State has an efficient method to their extermination practices. They send “scout” troops into villages who identify and mark Christian homes with the Arabic letter “N” — which is shorthand for “Nasrani,” or Nazarene: a Christian. The commando brigade follows shortly, and offers anyone who remains in these homes the choice of convert, submit or die. If the jihadists opt for the latter, the usual methods include crucifixion or beheading — even of children!

The symbol I’m speaking about looks like this:

When I asked the Congressman why he thought he hadn’t heard about this practice, he said something to me that was startling in its simplicity. “They’re beheading journalists. As a result no journalist will go into this area to report, for fear of meeting the same fate.” As much as I typically blame a left-leaning media for the lack of important information … I realized he was right. The Islamic State has ensured they can conduct their Christian genocide in secret.

The reason: Islamic State jihadists are headed here. They do not want Americans to know what is in store for us.

The point the Congressman left me with was this:

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Pure, Unadulterated Islam, Part One: Koran and Sunna

Below is the first of two-part series about the Islamic State by Hartmut Krauss, as translated by JLH. The translator remarks: “The author thoroughly probes IS and its demonstrable roots; the example of Tamerlane is especially striking.”

Pure, Unadulterated Islam

On the “Islamic State” — The Basis for its Impetus and Legitimization and for its Anti-Civilization Reign of Terror

By Hartmut Krauss
August 29, 2014

Source: Hintergrund-Verlag

Pictures and reports about the vicious and disgusting acts of violence of the terrorist militia “Islamic State” (IS), which has proclaimed a caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq, have become familiar through the mass media, but thus far not adequately classified, evaluated and commented upon. Instead, the familiar discourse of denial and dissociation dominates, stereotypically rejecting every logically founded correlation and claiming with glaring duplicity: “All that has nothing to do with Islam.” It is not certain yet whether this defensiveness — as outrageous as it is notorious — will hold, or whether the annoyance it causes will bring the pot to a boil. It is certain that death is making the rounds — for a long time now, a master out of the East

And so we hear of bestial mass executions of “infidels,” triumphalist beheading scenes and corpses obscenely violated for the camera, rape and enslavement of women and girls, small children maimed and killed before their mothers’ eyes by being cut in half[1], massacres of the most animalistic and perverse kind, up to feeding the violated corpses to the dogs (which in Islam are unclean animals).[2]

Almost everyone seeing these pictures agrees that this is a breach of civilization which must be stopped. But there is an almost universal lack of recognition that the actions of IS merely represent the cumulative and concentrated impact of horrifying actions long exhibited by various Islamic perpetrators at various places, and still continuing. Remember, for instance, the beheading of the kidnapped reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan (2002), the murder of Theo van Gogh (2004) in a public street in Holland, the filmed killing of the kidnapped American businessman Nicholas Berg by Iraqi jihadists (2004), the terrorist attacks in Madrid (2004) and London (2005) or the dismemberment of an English soldier in public by two African converts (2013) who shouted, “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you.”[3] Add to that the whole terrorist agenda of violence in numerous regional and national Islamist movements and groups from Al Qaida in the Maghreb, through Boko Haram (Nigeria), Al Shabaab (Somalia) the jihadist militias in Libya, the Islamists in the Sinai, from Hamas to the Pakistani and Afghani Taliban, as well as Islamic forces in the former southern republics of the Soviet Union, in India, in Indonesia, in the Philippines (Abu Sayyaf) and in China (Uighur separatists) and the Islamic movement of East Turkistan.[4]

What at first glance appears to be the phenomenology of an irrational, psychopathic blood-lust can on second glance be recognized as an articulate and normative procedure systematically derived from the sources of Islam and the historical matrix of Islamic conquests. That is to say, the barbaric and disgusting actions of IS do indeed have to do with Islam. They are a logical consequence and precise implementation of the instructional system embedded in Islam.

Leon de Winter correctly states: “Someone possessed by jihad has remarkable power. In an orgiastic fever, he can rape, kill and plunder. The brainwashing he has undergone assures him that this behavior is legitimized by his religion.”[5] It is precisely this reference to a supposed “divine will” — the psychologically sustainable effect of an Islamic God delusion — which generates the systematic excision of all scruples. Unlike a serial perpetrator, who is “driven” to act by an endogenous defect, the jihadist’s actions are based on the internalization of a way of thinking in the form of a religious ideology. It is about “translating” objective (in this case, Islamic) ideological content into subjective convictions, as a justification for actions.[6]

The uniqueness of IS is that — in contrast to the Nazis — they glory in their heinous acts and advertise them, using the modern media, while they simultaneously establish a primitive moral terrorism in accordance with their Salafist ideology. (A combination specific to Islam, of the technological modern with the barbaric pre-modern as the basis of a totalitarian movement.) [7] In this, the IS and the other Islamist groups are completely consistent: living out the basic characteristic of Islam, i.e., establishing a religious, early medieval, ruling and social order and supplying it with a universal claim to validity.

I. Koran and Sunna as Guiding Principle of Anti-Humanistic Jihadism

Considered apart from the present IS reign of terror shown in the media, this estimate still applies: “Hardly a day goes by when some particular, violent Muslim criminal does not kill ‘infidels’ in the name of and for the pleasure of Allah. Naturally, not all Muslims are terrorists, but on the other hand, most terrorists at this time are believing Muslims. Contrary to the standard media claim that violent jihadists are misusing Islam to accomplish their own goals, Islamist terrorists and suicide bombers are by no means consciously and strategically distorting and co-opting their religion, i.e., purposefully deceiving. Rather, these are people of deep religious conviction, who are convinced that their faith is ‘ the one true one.’ What is fateful here is that ‘role models’ can be ‘retrieved’ from the sayings of the Koran and the Sunna, to explain and justify their acts.” (Krauss, 2007, p. 201)

The Koran, which is considered by devout Muslims to be the direct word of God, and therefore may not be changed indiscriminately or re-interpreted arbitrarily,[8] states unmistakably that infidels must be beheaded and carnage must be brought upon them:

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 9/19/2014

In the wake of mass arrests of alleged terrorist plotters, Australian Muslims staged marches in Sydney against the demonization of Islam based on the behavior of a tiny minority of extremists. Meanwhile, Muslims in a Brisbane mosque have reached out to non-Muslims in an attempt to help them gain a better understanding of Islam.

In other news, authorities in Kenya have detained two Iranian men who were using forged Israeli passports. The two are suspected of planning terrorist attacks.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, Fjordman, Insubria, JP, KGS, Nick, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

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Reader Assistance Requested

Update: This post was sticky for a while in hopes that more European readers would notice and add statistics from their countries to the comments. Newer posts are further down.

The reporter at a major American website is looking for information on the immigration crisis in Europe, including updated numbers on how many Muslims are currently migrating to Europe. It’s a big project. He is astonished by what he is learning about Muslim immigration, and wants to learn more.

I told him that accurate immigration figures are difficult to come by in Europe, especially when the numbers involve Muslims. The advanced state of cultural enrichment in most Western European countries is something that the Powers That Be prefer to obfuscate, so they often hide (or forbid the collection of) statistics on race, religion, and ethnicity.

The Schengen Agreement is a complicating factor. The free movement of peoples within the Schengen area guarantees that the changing demographics of any given country are hard to track. Newly-arrived migrants in, say, Italy would much prefer to be in Britain, Sweden, or Germany, because those countries offer the most generous welfare benefits and are the least likely to require enrichers to do any actual work. So the “asylum seekers” do their best to relocate as soon as their feet are dry and their life vests discarded.

To make matters worse, large numbers of illegals are constantly arriving in Europe. Tracking their numbers with any degree of accuracy is all but impossible.

Therefore, I’d like to crowd-source this project. European readers are invited to supply the latest estimates of the number of annual immigrants to their countries, along with the estimated proportion of those that are Muslims. Please supply references for where you obtained your statistics, if possible.

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Why I Left England’s Mean and Unpleasant Land

The guest-essay below was written by Peter, a long-time reader and commenter who is now an English expatriate in Thailand.

Why I Left England’s Mean and Unpleasant Land
by Peter

I left England with my wife, Kanya, in February 2013 and bought a house in Northern Thailand. We had been married for just under eight years and I first brought her from her native Thailand to my home in West London in 2005, where she settled in well and quickly found work with the help of the local Thai community. Unlike most of our friends, we were debt-free and comfortably off. We had spent a great deal of money on renovating our flat, extending the lease and landscaping the garden, which we enhanced with two magnolia saplings. We were hoping to see them grow, but it wasn’t to be. However reluctantly, we felt we had to leave.

I had lived in Hayes, Middlesex since January 1988. At the time I moved there, Hayes had been a white working class area but by the time we left, it was neither. At any time and on any day of the week, Hayes town centre was crowded but the few white people to be seen were elderly and retired. While the absence of younger white people could have been attributed to the fact that they were working, the incidence of “white flight” from this part of London had become an accepted fact of life and those who could move had done so, and had done so in great numbers. On the other hand, the remaining black, Indian, Pakistani and Somali contingents, although able-bodied, did not appear to have jobs nor any intention of finding one.

Hayes is an area which runs westwards from the grubby Asian ghetto of Southall to the middle class suburb of Hillingdon. Southall had been settled by immigrants since the 1950s mainly by Sikhs and other Indians who had come to the UK to escape the rather dubious benefits of Indian independence and been drawn by the factory work in the area and, of course, by the jobs to be had in an expanding Heathrow Airport. Then came the Pakistanis and Bengalis who opened restaurants and other businesses while others involved themselves in the local textile industry that was still thriving at the time. Later, much later, came the Somalis and other Africans who made up the multicultural mix lauded by the liberals, who, of course, did not live anywhere near there.

By 1994 the population of Southall had started to spread the mile or two westwards to Hayes just when I decided to give up full time work, rent my flat and go travelling. When I came back at the end of 1999, Hayes was showing the effects of having been utilised intensively as a social dumping ground for a burgeoning unskilled immigrant population by the London Boroughs of Ealing, Hillingdon and Hounslow, leaving Hayes Town centre bearing a marked resemblance to the North West Frontier Province with most of the shops having been taken over by Asians and displaying signs in Hindi, Urdu and Arabic. There were Halal butchers, Indian mini marts as well as several Muslim shops selling Korans and other essential items that every good Muslim should not be without. On the street there were women in saris, headscarves, niqabs and full burkhas walking the customary four paces behind heavily bearded men in shalwar khamiz or ankle-length robes. Some but by no means all of the younger Indians, Pakistanis and other Asians wore Western clothes.

At this stage I must stress that Hayes had never been an ideal place to live even before the onset of creeping Islamisation. It was a down-at-heel district with more than its fair share of shaven-headed football hooligans and tattooed f-wits as well as a number of pubs that sensible people would take great care to avoid. It was considered to be a rough area with many beggars in the street, and where fights broke out regularly, especially when the pubs were closing. However, by the time I returned from my travels, the tattooed skinheads had moved out and the pubs they frequented, in addition to a good many others, had closed down. Some had become Asian restaurants while others had been pulled down to make room for “affordable housing” — that is, subsidized apartments for the terminally dependent. To offset what many people might see as an improvement, the incidence of low level street crime and burglary had increased to the extent that the police no longer investigated such things, but nobody wanted to talk about that or the dark-skinned drug dealers and their customers who had replaced most of the street drinkers and beggars.

The standard of driving had also deteriorated in this part of West London, because many of the newcomers had either not passed a driving test or had engaged a lookalike to take the test for them. At the time, I used to drive a four-year-old BMW until it was written off in a collision with a car driven by a homicidal Sri Lankan. Afterwards I decided to drive old wrecks to save myself further heartache, but that didn’t work either. My Rover was broken into so many times that my insurers felt compelled to decline further cover, while the Ford with which I replaced it had a door wrenched off by another thief in the process of stealing four Leonard Cohen cassettes. In the end, I purchased a 25-year-old Volvo 760 GLE, an indestructible tank of a vehicle and defied anyone to break into it or damage it in any way.

It was stolen.

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